Recognition and Treatment of Potentially Fatal Asthma

IT HAS frequently been stated and taught that bronchial asthma is not a lethal illness. Our experience has led us to ques-tion this concept, and a review of the lit-erature reveals that death from asthma is not rare. This report is based on 12 cases of the syndrome of fatal asthma and in-cludes 2 patients who were resuscitated from near-fatal episodes. We have tried to find clinical and physiological clues which may help us to delineate the asthmatic patient who is apt to die during a parox-ysm. Asthma was first described by Aretaeus, some 1,600 years ago, and the history of asthma is outlined in an interesting mono-